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PARIS — The only former NBA player in men’s beach volleyball jogged across the sand and waved on Monday as the over-caffeinated PA announcer introduced him to the crowd.
From the hard-courts of the NBA to Olympic beach volleyball, it’s Chase Budinger.
This moment was why Budinger prematurely left professional basketball behind six years ago. This moment was why Budinger has trained tirelessly every day instead of enjoying retired life. He wanted to know how far he could go if he focused solely on volleyball for the first time in his life. He wanted to see if he could achieve his childhood dream of making the Olympics.
Over the course of 32 thoroughly dominant minutes on Monday, Budinger demonstrated that he now might have to elevate his goals. He and partner Miles Evans performed like medal contenders during a speedy and convincing 21-14, 21-11 thumping of French duo Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat.
A heavily pro-French crowd began the match waving flags and chanting for “Les Bleus.” The environment was hostile and intimidating enough that Budinger compared it to what he experienced during college when Arizona visited venerable McArthur Court and the Oregon students got so loud it made the floor shake.
The French fans quieted in a hurry, though, once Budinger and Evans seized control of the match. For long stretches, the only audible sound at Eiffel Tower Stadium came from the second level, where family and friends of Budinger and Evans screamed their names and chanted “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.”
In the end, Budinger had only one complaint: The match ended too quickly.
“I felt like it went too fast,” he said. “I felt like there were times where I should have enjoyed the view a little more.”
After striving for this moment for so long, Budinger wanted more time to savor it.
The decision: Basketball or Volleyball?
Chase Budinger was just a freshman at La Costa Canyon High School when Josh Pastner first began hearing about him from friends.
“There was some talk that, hey, there’s a good young kid out in San Diego,” the then-Arizona assistant basketball coach told Yahoo Sports.
When Pastner traveled to watch Budinger play in person, he quickly discovered that Budinger didn’t fit the stereotypical basketball player mold. Here was a “true San Diego beach bum,” as Budinger puts it, a laid-back, fair-skinned, strawberry blonde who seldom removed his flip flops and board shorts when he wasn’t playing basketball.
The way Budinger played was also unusual, Pastner learned. He leaped like his high tops were rocket-powered. When battling for rebounds or pulling up for a shot, he elevated off the ground faster and higher than most of his peers.
“Chase was like a pogo stick,” Pastner recalled. “When he beat you on his first step and he was going to the rim, the way he would rise up so fast was incredible. It wasn’t normal. He had a special ability to do that.”
Elite leaping ability paired with a long, powerful frame was also beneficial in the other sport that Budinger played as a kid. He excelled as an outside hitter in volleyball just like older sister Brittanie Budinger, whose jersey the University of San Francisco retired, and older brother Duncan, a second-team All-American at Long Beach State.
By the time Budinger finished his junior year at La Costa Canyon, a massive decision loomed: Which sport would he make his focus in college? Would he pursue volleyball and try to nurture the dazzling talent that could propel him to the Olympics? Or would he concentrate on basketball and try to climb all the way to the NBA?
Would he choose the sport in which he became Volleyball Magazine’s national player of the year as a senior? Or the sport in which he shared co-MVP honors with Kevin Durant at the McDonald’s All-American game?
The final three colleges that Budinger considered were Arizona, UCLA and USC. The Bruins and Trojans recruited Budinger to play both basketball and volleyball. He ultimately chose to go to Arizona, the only one of the three that didn’t offer men’s volleyball.
The decision seems counterintuitive, but Budinger’s rationale now looks prescient. He didn’t think he’d ever reach his potential in either sport if he always played both at the same time. And it was a no brainer to see how far basketball could take him first given the money available to NBA players and the fact that it was far more realistic to play high-level beach volleyball into his late 30s or 40s.
“That was part of our sales pitch,” Pastner recalled. “You probably don’t have the same window playing in the NBA that you do with volleyball. So take full advantage. The financial upside of playing in the NBA is going to be a lot higher than the financial upside of pro beach volleyball.”
For a decade, Budinger put volleyball aside and focused on basketball. He was the Pac-10’s freshman of the year in 2007 and earned first-team all-conference honors two years later. Selected 44th overall in the 2009 NBA Draft by the Houston Rockets, Budinger spent parts of seven seasons in the league — and earned more than $18 million in salary.
It wasn’t until injuries cut short his NBA career that Budinger started to take volleyball seriously again. In 2018, after years of playing pickup volleyball games with friends in Hermosa Beach, Budinger made his debut on the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour and set a goal of making the Olympics.
“I questioned myself — am I doing the right thing?” Budinger said. “But after sulking for three weeks I changed my mindset. I just said if I’m going to do this, I’m going to go all in.”
'Other' makes the Olympics
The Olympics, despite Budinger’s height, athleticism and work ethic, didn’t happen overnight. Budinger and partner Sean Rosenthal finished tied for 33rd place in his debut pro tournament in Huntington Beach, Calif.
Over the next few years, Budinger kept learning, kept working and kept improving. He also churned through partner after partner searching for someone who could complement his game and match his drive.
Two years ago, Budinger invited Evans to coffee and proposed attempting to qualify for Paris together. Budinger had come to admire Evans’ decade plus of international experience and his ability as a passer and a defender.
When they first started working together, Budinger told Evans they would be training five times a week. Until then, Evans only practiced two or three times a week.
“This guy shows up to practice early all the time and sets a great example for me,” Evans said. “I think he brings a lot of his professionalism from the NBA.”
Many in beach volleyball circles didn’t give Budinger and Evans much of a chance of making the Olympics. When Volleyball Magazine put out a poll last year asking which two U.S. men’s teams would qualify, Budinger and Evans — listed as “other” — received just 1 percent of the vote.
More than a year later, Budinger and Evans in Paris with seven top-five finishes in nine qualifying events this year. The late surge helped Budinger, 36, and Evans, 34, overtake fellow Americans Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb in the international rankings.
“I grew up with a little dream board,” Budinger said. "One of the things that I had up there was the Olympic rings. Making the Olympics was something I always wanted to do. It’s funny because I never had the Olympic rings up there for basketball or volleyball. It was just the Olympic rings.”
Budinger may not be in Paris for basketball, but his experience in the NBA served him well on such a big stage. The French team of Krou and Gauthier-Rat both said that Budinger was the only player who looked calm and comfortable in his Olympic debut.
When the U.S. men’s basketball team returns to Paris next week, Budinger could have some famous faces in the stands supporting him. On the night of the Opening Ceremony, Durant, LeBron James and several other U.S. stars ran into Budinger, greeted him warmly and expressed interest in coming to one of his matches.
“It was super, super awesome to see the respect they gave him,” Evans said. “They walked right up to him and said hi. I was just like, ‘Wow, really. This guy’s my partner.’”
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